Born to be Loved
by elliott ashes
Summary: Akito's world has always been made up of paradoxical extremes. Loved and hated, powerful and powerless, lashing out yet desperate for closeness. This series of vignettes follows Akito from a lonely, anger-infused childhood to post-curse attempts to make a normal life... while not having much experience with what "normal" means.


[Note: I've used gender neutral pronouns for Akito's love interest, since I wanted to leave this aspect of Akito's future open ended. The reader may imagine them as a character or OC of their choice.]

 _Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all_  
 _forgiven,_  
 _even though we didn't deserve it._  
-Richard Siken, 'Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out'

1.

Your mother loves you. You wish she didn't.

When your father dies, you are all she has left of him. A poor imitation, but she clutches you close enough to suffocate. Her love doesn't cancel out her hatred; she tells you always of your inadequacies, your inner wickedness. You are the center of her world, and she rages at this universe that has let her down.

You are supposed to be the one thing she can control. She molds you: into her son, into the god of the Sohmas. She hates you yet treats you as extension of herself. A marionette, homonculus, vessel for her will. Her loathing is self-loathing. Her love is a hunger, devouring your autonomy. Yet she is never satiated.

After losing your father, this is the closest you have felt to another person. She will not leave you. Cannot leave you, because you are one. You hate her in turn, and it is a kind of love. An intensity that burns away all space between you.

 _I know you_ , she says. You don't know whether or not you want her to be right.

You love your mother. You wish you didn't.

2.

You find yourself living in simultaneous, contradictory versions of reality.

Your father's soul resides in a box beneath your bed. Of course souls don't live in boxes — you're too old to believe in fantasy. You sneer at superstition; if you weren't god, you'd be an atheist. You're proud of your lack of sentimentality.

Yet you guard this box with your life. You love your father, and he is in there. That's simply a fixed truth.

You observe the Sohmas from your elevated distance. They are stupid, overcome with saccharine bonds to one another. Their idiocy turns the blood in your veins scalding. Don't they know the family is more important than their small, individual desires? You see through to the pointlessness of their tiny lives.

Yet you ache for it. The way they love each other. Ordinary human love for their friends, their spouses, their children. This love you will never have now that your father is gone. _(No, he's not gone, he's in the box.)_

The contradictions pile up. You hate Ren and want nothing to do with her. You love her and cling to her. You push her away and scream bloody murder. You bend to her will, desperate for approval.

You rule the family, can make them do anything. They belong to you. But they will never love you.

You are worthless garbage, but you're better than any human.

You scoff at the idea of gentle leadership, prefer tactics of fear. But the Sohmas' lack of love cuts you deep. The more you assert control, the more your volatile emotions are at their mercy. You can control anything except yourself. Which means, really, you can't control anything.

You are a god and you are a frightened, lonely child.

Your mother loves and hates you. You love and hate yourself. Ordinary lives are worthless, and your soul corrodes with jealousy for them.

None of these truths cancels out another, and so you must live with one foot in one reality, one foot in its opposite. The world you stand on shifts constantly. You are torn apart, split and doubled. You don't know what's real, or what "real" even means.

You only know you are furious.

3.

Many years later, you live alone, miles and years away from most of the Sohma family. No longer a god, you've shed your past life, a process that was painful, ambivalent. But it was the only way you could stay alive.

You're ambivalent about that, too.

You work part time, less for the money than to have a way to fill the hours. Bad things happen when you spend too much time with your own thoughts.

Falling in love surprises you. And then it surprises you to be loved back, a type of love that is warm and energizing, rather than obliterating. It's scarily unfamiliar, and you feel clumsy and stupid as you try to return gestures of affection. Your meticulous flower arrangement induces an allergic reaction, and your attempt at a romantic dinner fills your apartment with smoke. Eyes watering, they reassure you that it's not that bad, even as the two of you cough in the acrid air, scrambling to open the windows.

But then their coughing turns into laughter, and then yours does too. And even though everything has gone wrong, it's the most okay you've ever felt.

You throw the charcoaled remains of dinner in the trash, go out for ice cream, and walk through the spring evening hand in hand. It's the most normal moment, and the most special. For once you don't mind the paradox.

4.

The one you love is gentle and good. Sometimes this makes you feel filthy. Sometimes you would rather be screamed at, rather be hit and hit back. Rather be seen for what you are: all the violence and hatred and failure. It rises up inside you and you want to explode, _Get away from me. For your own good._

You want them to look at you with horror and disgust, so you can finally stop pretending to be better than you are. Finally stop tricking them into thinking you are lovable.

Instead, they hold you while you storm inside yourself. You bite back the venom that tries to pour from your throat. You try to love them the way they deserve, to learn to return this unfamiliar kindness.

You're not sure if the good they see in you is real, but god, you will do everything in your power to try to make it so.

One night, you wake in the dark, heart hammering from another nightmare. That Woman was chasing you — or was it you chasing someone? Your faces look so similar distorted by rage and desperation. There was screaming and blood, a knowledge that things would never again be alright.

And then you woke in darkness, still yourself.

Your lover lays beside you, breathing in the black air. Your blood freezes as an image flashes in your mind: how easily, with one hand, you could snuff that breath.

Instead, you lean into your lover, listen to their heartbeat as you wait for yours to slow.

5.

When your daughter is born, you are afraid to hold her.

Afraid your evil will rise up inside you and break her. Afraid you will be foolish, incompetent, unfit to care for a life. Afraid you will not love her, or that you will love her in the wrong ways. Afraid she would be better off without you.

But the nurse hands her to you before you can resist. Her mouth a small O, your daughter looks up at you with shining eyes, eyes that have never seen pain or abuse or cruelty. And then she closes them to sleep, trusting you, of all people, entirely.

As she lays in your arms, a fierceness that is the opposite of violence fills your chest, and you promise you will never do to her what was done to you, what you have done to others. Never speak to her the way you speak to yourself.

She deserves to be loved.

You realize you're crying.

6.

Her first day of kindergarten, you drive her to school. As you walk into the building, telling her you'll see her in a few hours, she clings to your leg and shakes her head.

 _There's nothing to be frightened of,_ you say, but wonder if she can tell you've spent her whole life afraid. _You'll make friends._

 _What if I don't?_

Her dark eyes brim with anxiety. Crouching down beside her, you say, _I don't see how anyone could know you and not love you. But whatever happens, I'll be here for you._

She releases you, walks off into the crowd. Her steps are hesitant, but she doesn't look back.

As you turn away, you're glad she can't see the water rising in your eyes.

Later that afternoon, when you go to pick her up from school, she smiles and runs towards you. All the ride home, she rambles about the other children, the games they played, barely taking a breath. She's social in a way you never were; she's one of the children you would have been jealous of at her age. But as her parent, you are relieved.

In one of the two worlds you stand in, your heart twinges at how little she needs you. In the other, you recognize this as the greatest gift you could ask for: she has not inherited your insecurities. She is her own person. You haven't ruined her.

In your mind, you shift your weight. Take a step.

Out loud, you ask her to tell you more.

In the rearview mirror, the Sohma grounds lurk in the distance. The place you were both god and frightened child grows smaller and smaller, though it never quite disappears. Even when it's only a speck on the horizon, you know it's there.

You keep driving. You aren't going back.

7.

You never planned to live this long. When you were a god, no one expected it. And as a person? Well, you never really anticipated being a person at all.

You know this life is more than you deserve. In the story you were told all your life, you died young. But this strange, post-godhood sequel... it's a story with a moral you don't understand. Maybe there isn't one.

For a god, you were never all that spiritual. You needed proof: of love, of loyalty. Good and evil were ill-defined concepts. Anything (anyone) out of your sight could disappear. You held on with white knuckles and paralytic fear.

Now they're gone. Even the god you used to be.

Yet you try to love the life they've left you. And, sometimes, you don't have to try. Sometimes your existence doesn't feel like a cosmic mistake. Or if it is, it's a mistake you can live with.

The nightmares persist, but they grow less frequent. The emptiness inside you never fully leaves, but it no longer swallows you. Sometimes you even forget all about it. You love your daughter and partner, and often, your amazement at your luck outstrips your sense of loss. You try to be kind, to tamp down the anger that sometimes rears inside you. To hold onto your love, vulnerable as it is, and let it grow greater than your jealousy and fear.

You drop off your daughter, drive to work, come home to your family and the life you've made together. This life that, undeserved as it is, you will do all you can to be present in. To believe in the bonds you have made with others, in this love you can't always see, but that you can feel.

Or maybe you can see it: in the spindly garden, in the books on the shelf, in your daughter's eyes and your lover's arms and the rice in the pot you dish up to share. These moments you hold close, knowing you must eventually let go. You let yourself love them anyway.

It's the closest you've come to something sacred.


End file.
